.・°°・☆・°°・.
The morning sun in the North didn't rise, it struggled through a thick, oppressive frost that clung to the windows of the Academy medical wing. Inside the room where Aiden had finally stilled, the air was heavy with the leftover scent of cedar and ozone—a ghost of the power that had leveled the wing the night before.
Asher woke up on the cold stone floor with a groan that felt like it was tearing through his skull. His limbs felt like lead, and his memory was a fractured mirror of heat, golden eyes, and a rejection so absolute it had stopped his heart.
He pushed himself up, his head spinning, and his eyes immediately landed on the bed.
Aiden was still submerged in a deep, restorative heat-sleep. He was lying on his back, the heavy royal blankets kicked down to his waist. He was shirtless, his chest rising and falling with the deep, rhythmic cadence of a soldier. And he was snoring. It wasn't a dainty, royal sound, it was a loud, guttural rumble that vibrated in the small room—a sign that his body was finally, aggressively, refueling its spent mana.
Asher sat on the floor, unable to move. He was supposed to be Aiden's rival. He was supposed to be the Alpha who helped the Prince through a moment of weakness. But as he observed the lines of Aiden's shoulders—broader now, marked by the sudden growth spurt of his heat—Asher felt a wave of irritation wash over him.
"You arrogant, loud mouthed brat," Asher whispered, though there was no bite in it.
He tried to turn his face away, a scowl deepening on his features. He felt a prickle of shame. He remembered the night before—the way Aiden had looked at him with those lethal, deep amber eyes. The way Aiden had commanded the very air to reject Asher's touch. The dominance had been so pure, so undeniable, that it hadn't just beaten Asher. it had rewritten him.
And then, it happened.
As Asher stared at Aiden's sleeping form, a strange, fluttering sensation erupted in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't the butterflies of a schoolboy crush, it was a deep, visceral realignment.
Every time Aiden let out a particularly loud snore, Asher's heart skipped a beat. He felt a weird, magnetic pull toward the bed. His skin felt overly sensitive, and a phantom warmth began to pool at the base of his neck.
He didn't realize it yet—the medics wouldn't believe it for days—but Aiden's pheromones Pressure had been so overwhelming that it had triggered a rare biological anomaly in Asher. Under the crushing weight of a pure blood alpha pheromones, Asher's own Alpha glands were beginning to shift.
The aggression in his scent was fading, replaced by a soft, receptive sweetness. He was being re-presented by the sheer force of Aiden's authority. He looked at Aiden's muscular, bare chest and felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to curl up against him—not as a rival, but as a subject. As a mate.
"What is wrong with me?" Asher gasped, clutching his throat. He felt dizzy, his head light, as his body underwent a transformation it wasn't designed for.
Aiden, oblivious to the fact that he was accidentally changing the secondary gender of his rival just by breathing, simply turned over in his sleep and let out another earth-shaking snore.
Aiden slept through that day, and the next. The Academy remained in a state of semi-quarantine. Arion and Kyon stayed in the adjacent parlor, their faces grim, while Celine sent letters every hour asking if her big brother was still alive.
Asher stayed in the room. He couldn't leave. The guards tried to pull him out for a medical check, but he snarled at them with a protectiveness he didn't understand. He spent forty eight hours watching Aiden breathe, his own scent shifting from Winter rose to a Soft Birch.
On the third morning, the snoring abruptly stopped.
Aiden's eyes flew open. For a moment, they were clear and calm. Then, the memories hit him. The leaking. The prayers for heaven. The accident in his trousers. The way he had screamed for his father. The fact that he had been shirtless in front of Asher.
Aiden sat up so fast he nearly fell off the bed. His entire body—from the tips of his ears down to his toes—flushed a vivid, agonizing red. It was a blush so powerful it looked like a sunburn.
"Oh... oh no," Aiden whispered, his voice cracking.
He looked down at his bare chest, then at Asher, who was sitting in a chair by the window, looking at him with wide, strangely soft eyes.
"Asher?" Aiden's voice was a tiny, humiliated squeak. "Were you... were you here the whole time?"
"Yes," Asher said, his voice unusually gentle.
Aiden buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. "I'm a disaster. I'm the Crown Prince and I... I thought I was dying because I had to go to the bathroom. I cried! I cried in front of the General! I filled the whole school with... with smell!"
He felt a wave of such intense embarrassment that he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He remembered Arion holding him, the doctors poking him, and the way he had essentially thrown a biological tantrum that knocked out his entire grade.
"Everyone knows," Aiden wailed into his palms. "I can never go back to class. I have to abdicate. I'll live in a cave. I'll be the Hermit Prince of Pheromones."
"Aiden, stop," Asher said, standing up. He walked over to the bed, and for the first time in their lives, he didn't try to shove Aiden. He reached out and tentatively touched Aiden's shaking shoulder. "You didn't look like a disaster. You looked like... a messy kid."
Aiden looked up through his fingers, his face still crimson. "I snored, didn't I?"
Asher paused, a small, genuine smile tugging at his lips. "Like a dying bear."
Aiden groaned and flopped back onto the pillows, pulling the blanket over his head to hide his shame. He was twelve years old, he was officially an Alpha, and he was absolutely certain he would never be able to look another human being in the eye again.
But beneath the blanket, as his heart began to settle, that familiar itch in his ears returned. It was a soft, rhythmic drumming. He didn't know it, but across the sea, Lorcan was leaning his head against the stone wall of the High Tower, matching his heartbeat to the one he felt in the wind.
The shame was temporary. The bond was forever. And I made a mistake. Aiden flush a deep crimson red .